Anima Animus
An original score composed for a contemporary dance company, inspired by Mallarmé’s symbolist poem and Debussy’s scoring of Prélude à l’Après-midi d’Un Faune
"Just by listening to the first track, 'Shadow' I was taken to a deep place of the soul.... an exploration. I can say that I am always touched deeply by the sounds you create." Dorothy M.
Inspired by Mallarmé’s symbolist poem and Debussy’s scoring of Prélude à l’Après-midi d’Un Faune, Anima/Animus is a contemporary narrative and music adaptation which, like the sources motivating it, seeks to push the boundaries of creative technique into new listening experiences for the audience. The original composition considers the symbolic associations of the instruments and phrases in Debussy’s work and builds them into an archetypal story about self and shadow, masculine and feminine, anima and animus, desire and defeat.
The piece uses sound as the primary platform through which to tell the story as the audience is invited to travel across six sections entitled ‘Home’, ‘Desire’, ‘Dream’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Fate’, ‘Return’. Whilst ‘Home’ situates the nymphs and the audience close to the sea in a move suggestive that one of the nymphs may indeed be the Calypso of Homer’s Ogygia, ‘Desire’ and ‘Dream’ tell a coming of age story in which the faun reaches outwards exploring, through his imagination, the different possibilities that his surroundings offer him. What he finds surprises him and through a series of primal struggles with himself and Calypso he encounters his ‘Shadow’ and ‘Fate’. The return ‘Home’ is not so much a return to a geographical place, although the sounds of the sea remind us of the beginning of this story, but rather it is a space in which self and other come together, each having grown through the adventures experienced.
Anima/Animus is as symbolist and multisensory in nature as the work it draws on, innovatively combining the archetypal and abstract with a resonant cultural, social and artistic set of codes, allowing engagement with the piece to be different each time.
Anima/Animus is as symbolist and multisensory in nature as the work it draws on, innovatively combining the archetypal and abstract with a resonant cultural, social and artistic set of codes, allowing engagement with the piece to be different each time.
Anima/Animus is available for streaming and download, and for purchase on Bandcamp.
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Audio CD | 6 tracks | Instrumental | July 2015
Total time: 56:09 Created, recorded and produced by Renzo Spiteri All music © 2015 Renzo Spiteri. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED |
Anima/Animus was commissioned by ŻfinMalta Dance Ensemble (Malta's National Contemporary Dance Company) as the musical score for Je Tiens La Reine, a contemporary dance adaptation of Mallarmé’s 1876 L’Après-midi d’un Faune and Debussy’s 1894 Prèlude a L’Après-midi d’un Faune. Je Tiens La Reine was premiered during Malta International Arts Festival 2015.
